One of the places we like to stage for a trip to or from Portland Maine is Cliff Island.  There are a number of private moorings there that are “destination moorings” meaning the folks have their boats somewhere else and visit their mooring as a “destination”.  This means that in the times when we are either arriving to or leaving Portland there is typically no one there, just a bunch of open moorings.

So we “borrow a mooring ball without permission” and almost always the same one.  It’s significantly oversized for our boat and is always clean and looks well used. 

This fall we decided to lift the dinghy motor and the new dinghy battery up on to the deck and row to shore for our stay at Cliff.  So on Friday October 5th we did our final checks and dropped our Provincetown mooring lines and motored out of the harbor and pointed ourselves north.

I did notice us moving much slower than normal which had me nervous but the motor was fine and we didn’t have any issues.  Once around the point we raised the sails and kept the motor engaged and at about 50% power.  With the alternator making some power I decided we’d leave the motor on until we were at least to 95% power.  about 30 hours later the belt started to squeal and we stopped making electricity.  We were at 80% power.  When we got close I kicked us up to more engine power and lowered the sails.  Still we were only doing about 2.5 knots!

But we arrived at Cliff safely and had enough food, water, and propane for about a week.

With the decision made to row to shore we only went to shore on two of the 8 days we were there.  The rest of the time mostly just getting grumpy on the boat.

I really enjoy Cliff Island and enjoyed our two walks on shore.  For one visit I walked up to the library and through the downtown area and on the other visit a hike up to the tallest point on the island and then another walk past the library and downtown area.

We arrived on a Saturday, spent the week, and then on the following Sunday we took advantage of our third calm day to lift the dinghy up onto the deck.

We figured that a dinghy hanging off the back in the davits while it fills with snow is probably not the safest winter option.  Especially when we can take it up to the bow and put it bottom up for the winter.

The Portland Pudgy is about 120 pounds so lifting it up with the halyard and getting it positioned on the deck to lower it was a bit of a challenge that took about an hour.

Then some scraping of the residual growth off it and we were done our pre-arrival projects.

Our winter contract in Portland starting on October 15th when Tuesday morning arrived we once again dropped the mooring lines and this time we just motored the 8 miles over to the marina.

Called over and got our slip assignment and now we’re all tied up for the winter.